Online synchronous learning presents unique challenges when teaching creative fields such as design and copywriting. Creative education characteristically involves individual expression, informal group collaboration, and praxis-driven experiential learning. However, the online environment dehumanises the experience, reducing opportunities for essential social interaction and community development, which impacts on engagement and the learning experience. This paper aims to build on previous research in the humanising of online education, by examining strategies for enhancing social presence in the classroom, specifically in fields of creative education.

South Africa’s escalating environmental challenges, exacerbated by the Anthropocene, demand a radical rethinking of design education. While science and engineering have developed mechanisms to address ecological degradation, design education remains rooted in Human-Centred Design, which prioritises human needs while neglecting planetary systems. This paper argues for a paradigm shift toward Planet-Centred Design, supported by interdisciplinary collaboration through STEAM(D) (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics + Design) and biodesign as transformative approaches for South African tertiary arts, design, and engineering education.

Lived experiences are central to preserving Indigenous cultural heritage, shaping identity, and enabling knowledge transmission. Globalisation creates major challenges for Indigenous communities by pressuring them to conform to dominant cultures, leading to the loss of traditions and practices. For the ≠Khomani San of Witdraai, Askham, in the Northern Cape of South Africa, roadside conversations are essential forms of informal knowledge exchange that enable storytelling, cultural adaptation, and identity assertion. These spontaneous interactions at roadside stalls provide unique sites for authentic knowledge transfer that are distinct from formal museum narratives or heritage tourism encounters.

In many design education programmes, especially within multi-site higher education institutions, assessment development is often centralised and standardised to ensure quality, consistency and equitable delivery across campuses. While this approach maintains institutional coherence, it can also constrain lecturers’ freedom to adapt assessments in response to emerging technologies such as AI-driven tools, local industry demands and evolving design challenges.

Language plays a crucial role in a person's daily life, from communicating with friends, family, and peers to shaping how individuals think and critically engage with the world around them. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, English has emerged as the dominant and widely accepted language for communication. This trend is also evident in student award competitions, such as the Loeries, where the vast majority of finalists and winning entries are in English, with very few submissions in native languages. This observation suggests that tertiary institutions offering design degrees may not actively encourage students to complete their projects in their mother tongues.

Design education within the Higher Education sector must recognise its critical role in preparing students to design solutions for the challenges of the future. This paper explores the theoretical and conceptual similarities and differences between design and futures thinking that can be integrated for more socially and economically impactful design practice that shapes the future. The role of future-focused design can also play a significant role in the teaching of disciplines and subjects outside of the design field.

The South African higher education landscape has become progressively diverse since the onset of democracy, with students emanating from different racial, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. As such, the country’s multicultural context highlights the need to focus on pedagogical approaches that promote inclusivity when designing learning experiences for diverse student needs and backgrounds. Cross-cultural interactions exist between educators, students, and instructional designers. Given that both implicit and explicit awareness is said to impact learning, it can be assumed that developing cultural competence affects the way learning is designed and experienced.

The ideation process is one of the most challenging components of the design process for students in Higher Education. Many students struggle with a lack of inspiration and confidence due to the need for perfection, which demotivates them to share or develop their ideas fully. Traditional ideation techniques often feel repetitive or restrictive, resulting in frustration and disengagement.

In 2006, author Howard Gardner published a book titled Five Minds for the Future. The book considers how global trends in contemporary society, such as the increasing power of and reliance on technology, will affect the future of education and the development of human intelligence. The book goes on to outline a theoretical model of five different types of intelligences and the pertinent role each will play in the future. While the book was written and published nearly two decades ago, many of Gardner’s trends, forecasts, and analyses have proven useful over the progression of time, and continue to increase in global influence.

Fashion brand communication on Instagram is critical in shaping Generation Z’s (Gen Z) perceptions of identity, self-expression, and beauty. However, concerns persist about the continued use of objectifying imagery in digital marketing, even as overt sexism declines. This paper explores how specific fashion brands engage Gen Z through visual strategies on Instagram, revealing that Adidas aligns with Gen Z values through empowerment-centric, low-objectification imagery; Diesel employs playful provocation and stylised objectification to tap into Gen Z’s appetite for rebellion; and Zara, while aesthetically aspirational, lacks the diversity needed to resonate with South African audiences.

Higher Certificate programmes serve as a bridge for students who do not meet the entry requirements for degree programmes, providing an opportunity to acquire the essential skills they may be lacking to complete or gain access to undergraduate studies of their choice. For these programmes to be effective, curriculum design must fully consider the Higher Certificate students as individuals with specific and unique learning needs, who often enter with varying levels of academic preparedness. Curriculum designers often assume that students already possess certain skills, including digital competencies and soft skills such as planning and time management. However, a lack of these skills might contribute to poor academic performance.

Game design education is often framed around theoretical frameworks or technical skill development, frequently separating academic knowledge from industry practice. This paper challenges that separation by exploring the cyclical knowledge exchange that occurs when a practitioner actively engages in both teaching and game development. Through a co-authored autoethnographic reflection, the paper examines how the ongoing development of an independent digital game has shaped one educator’s teaching approach, while classroom experiences have simultaneously refined his professional design practice.

This paper reports on a project named Platform 6, which was designed to facilitate teacher development and thereby to develop teachers as scholars. Initiated within the context of Boyer’s Scholarship of Engagement (1991), Platform 6 is a training programme and awareness drive devised for secondary school design teachers on the pedagogy of teaching design thinking and practice.

The exploratory first leg of Platform 6 was limited to a sample of National Senior Certificate (NSC) schools in the Western Cape. Qualitative-exploratory research methodology was employed to gain real world insight about the teaching and learning environment of design teachers in South Africa. It was useful to understand the dynamics of design teaching in grades 10 to 12 in Western Cape schools.